


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Preserve

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Detective Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Mild Gore, Werewolf Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29407110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: In the course of an investigation, Stiles meets Peter Hale.What an asshole!
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 93
Kudos: 788
Collections: Steter Discord Valentine's Exchange 2021





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gryvon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryvon/gifts).



> This was written as part of the Steter Discord Valentine's Exchange. 
> 
> For Gryvon. I hope you like it!

There is nothing good about getting out of bed at 3 a.m. on a winter’s morning when it’s been drizzling for two days straight, Stiles can’t find his rubber boots, and the dead body he has to look at is located halfway along a muddy ridge in the middle of the Preserve. Nope, all the overtime in the world isn’t going to make up for the rain slithering down the collar of his jacket, and the cold mud seeping into his dress shoes.

Why did he decide to come back to Beacon Hills again?

“Stiles!” His dad waves him up the last of the way.

Oh, right. That’s why. He’d stupidly got the idea that his dad was getting older and needed someone close by to keep an eye on him, when he’s not the one gasping for breath like he’s got a collapsed lung, is he? Dad’s cholesterol might make his doctor give him narrow looks, but at least he’s got more stamina that Stiles, who at the moment is doing his best impression of an asthmatic pug.

Wheezing, Stiles finally crests the top of the ridge, and bends over with both hands on his knees while he catches his breath.

“Just checking out the soil samples, son?” his dad asks.

His dad is an asshole, and Stiles loves him for it.

“Yup.” He straightens up at last, wipes rain from his face, and squints at the actual crime scene. “Well, that’s a dead guy, alright.”

Stiles isn’t usually so flippant around dead bodies, but it’s only him, his dad, and a couple of deputies from the station. It’s not as though there’s any grieving family around.

And yeah, the guy is very much dead. It looks like he had a fight with a meat grinder, and lost. Stiles glances at Deputy Boyd. He went to school with Boyd, but they didn’t hang out much. Boyd was quiet and serious, and Stiles was a frenetic ball of stupid energy. They did not vibe. He likes Boyd a lot though. The guy is one of Dad’s best deputies. At the moment, he’s staring out into the darkness, and he’s holding a rifle in his hands.

“Probably a mountain lion,” Dad says.

Well, that sure explains the rifle.

“You let me come all the way up here in the dark when there’s a mountain lion on the loose?”

“Well, it already ate,” Dad says, and then rolls his eyes. “You have a firearm, Stiles, which is more than this poor bastard had.”

It’s a fair point. Stiles angles his flashlight at the dead guy, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. It’s like a gross magic eye picture. If he squints, he can just about make out a human being.

“Any ID?” he asks.

Dad pulls out an evidence bag. There’s nothing in it but some bloody car keys. “Nope, but we’re thinking maybe he’s a hiker or something, and he left his wallet in his car. I’ve got Parrish checking out all the parking lots with trails that feed onto the ridge, so hopefully he’ll find us a… what is this? A Mazda?”

Stiles peers at the logo on the keys and nods.

“I’m guessing a mountain lion.” Dad exhales heavily and looks down at the body. “Sorry to call you out for this, kid, but…” He shrugs.

Yeah, it’s protocol. As one of the department’s few detectives, Stiles gets called out to a bunch of stuff that later turns out to be nothing at all. It looks like this is going to be one of those things. But he’s got to be here, just in case it turns out to be more than meets the eye. Just like the poor crime scene investigator, who Stiles is sure will be lugging her equipment up the ridge any minute now. At least Stiles travels light.

“It’s cool,” Stiles says. “Who found him?”

“Couple of campers,” Boyd said. “Parrish gave them a ride back into town. They were pretty shaken up.”

Of course they were. Stiles isn’t a fan of horror movies himself, and certainly wouldn’t like to find himself in the middle of one. He’ll catch up with them sometime later in the morning, just to go over their statements, but he figures Dad’s right: it’s a mountain lion. And mountain lions are very much outside Stiles’s jurisdiction. As soon as he ticks and flicks this, it’ll be the rangers’ problem.

“Okay,” he says, figuring he’s seen all he needs to see, and definitely more than he wants to see, “I’m gonna head back into town. I’ll catch you guys later.”

And he squelches off back down the muddy track, safe in the knowledge that his work here is done and there’s nothing the eventual autopsy report will do to change that.

*****

“Are you wearing Converse?” Joe the forensic medical examiner asks.

Yes, yes, he is. Bright red Converse that don’t exactly go with his suit, but his shoes are still wet from last night.

“You’re not supposed to notice that,” Stiles says, and sips his coffee.

“I have an eye for detail,” Joe says. “It’s kind of a job requirement.”

“Less about my fashion sense and more about the dead guy, please.” Stiles leans against a row of stainless steel cabinets on one side of the room and grimaces as Joe pulls out the drawer with the dead guy on it. He just had breakfast, and he’d really like for it to remain where he put it. He’s already ruined one pair of shoes today; he doesn’t want to vomit on his Converse. “Can’t you just give me the report, and not the total immersion Technicolor experience?”

Joe sighs and closes the drawer. “Fine.” He bustles over to his desk. “Okay, so the sheriff was right…” He gives it a moment to build up the tension, and looks vaguely annoyed when Stiles refuses to bite. “And also wrong.”

Stiles resists the urge to look at his watch. “In what way?”

“Well, it was definitely a wild animal,” Joe says, flapping a photograph in front of Stiles, “but not a mountain lion!”

Okay, so that’s a little bit interesting. Stiles straightens up. “Seriously? What was it, then?”

Joe beams. “A _wolf_!”

“What?” Stiles furrows his brow. “A wolf? But there aren’t any wolves around here. There haven’t been wolves here for about a century, give or take. People killed them all.”

“Now that’s what I thought too,” Joe says, “but they are being reintroduced in some parts of the state. Good ecological management, is what it is. Well, this guy here probably doesn’t think so.” He tilts his head in the direction of the drawers. “I suppose you could argue that one mutilated corpse is a small price to pay for healing the environment, but you probably _shouldn’t_ , at least in front of the guy’s family.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. “You probably shouldn’t.”

He likes to think that he and Joe share a moment pondering the moral quandaries of the philosophy of utilitarianism, but honestly Stiles is actually wondering if he should get a sub for lunch or a burrito.

“Okay,” he says at last, peeling himself off the cabinets. “Can I get a copy of your report, and I’ll be on my way.”

He’s definitely going to get a burrito.

*****

The towing company delivers Dead Guy’s Mazda to the holding yard at the back of the station, and Stiles eats his burrito and watches as Parrish and Boyd go through it.

“Any ID yet?” he asks, because they know that the car is registered to a Clay Reddick, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s Dead Guy. And Stiles would rather have at least an idea of their victim’s identity before they go knocking on doors asking family members. Because there’s no good way to say, ‘Heeeey, was your loved one Clay driving this car? No? Well, that’s great news for Clay, but someone else is super dead, so let’s tally up the family members and see who’s missing, shall we?’

“Wallet!” Boyd says triumphantly.

“Score!” Stiles moves forward as Boyd straightens up and flips the wallet open.

“Clay Reddick,” he says.

“That’s good enough for me to start knocking on some family members’ doors,” Stiles says, and then rethinks that. Stiles hates doing death messages, and the best part of being a detective is that he can relegate them to the deputies. “Well, it’s good enough for me to send you guys knocking on some family members’ doors.”

Parrish gives him a sad look that doesn’t change Stiles’s mind at all, because it really only emphasises how well-suited he is for the job. And then his expression shifts. “Aw, no.”

“What?”

Parrish holds up a dog car harness. “I hope the dog wasn’t with him.”

And _ugh_. Right there, right in the chest. Stiles really shouldn’t be spending any more time on this case—a wolf did it, mystery solved—but suddenly he’s emotionally invested. And yes, he’s well aware of how terrible that sounds. Mutilated dead guy with his throat ripped out? Meh. But possible lost dog? A tragedy! It’s just…the job throws a lot of shitty things at him, and sometimes Stiles doesn’t get to save the people. Sometimes all he can do is try to save the dog. It’s not much, but sometimes it’s just enough to let him sleep at night.

“Make sure you ask about the dog when you do the death message,” he tells them.

He heads back inside, and hopes that Clay Reddick didn’t take his dog hiking with him when he set out into the Preserve yesterday.

His hope doesn’t even last as long as the end of lunch, because Hailey, the crime scene investigator, dumps a plastic evidence bag on his desk. Inside it there’s a muddy blue leash she found underneath Reddick’s mutilated corpse. Well, half a muddy blue leash.

Because the leash has been bitten through halfway down.

“No sign of the dog though?” Stiles asks.

Hailey shakes her head. “Maybe it ran away?”

Which, when Stiles thinks of some poor dog out there, lost and alone and scared, is actually no consolation at all. 

*****

On Wednesday, Stiles spends the morning in court giving evidence in a fraud case. In the afternoon two different assaults land on his desk. It’s not until he’s just about ready to head home at last that he notices the Reddick file has been updated. It’s no longer Stiles’s case; the second it was a wolf attack, he flicked it to Boyd and Parrish to finish up the report on the deceased, and notified the incredibly dubious ranger of a wolf attack.

“There aren’t any wolves in this part of California, Stilinski,” Cora Hale had told him. It had been over the phone, but Stiles could still picture her sneer perfectly. The problem with working in the same town he grew up in is that Cora Hale still thinks of him as the kid who put Play-Doh down her underpants in kindergarten. It was a terrible way to introduce himself, and she’s never forgiven him for it.

“I’m just telling you what the M.E. said.”

“Well, he’s wrong.” And she’d ended the call.

Not his problem.

Except when has Stiles ever let that stop him? Never, that’s when. So he checks the file for Reddick’s address, signs the guy's keys out from evidence, and goes for a drive to his house.

It’s not a very nice house, but neither is Stiles’s place, so he feels in no real position to judge the sagging porch and the bare dirt where most people would keep a lawn. If Beacon Hills has a seedy side, Reddick’s house is definitely on the edges of it. Except it looks like the seediness is very slowly being replaced by people who bought cheap and are currently renovating the shit out of their places. Stiles passed at least three different contractors’ trucks coming down the street, and two landscapers.

Is Beacon Hills having a housing boom? Did he miss it? He probably missed it.

He gets out of his car and walks around the back yard. There’s a big dog kennel there, and a stake with a chain attached to it in the middle of the hard-packed dirt yard. It looks like the dog wasn’t living in luxury any more than Reddick was.

Stiles moves up onto the back porch and unlocks the door.

“Hello?” he calls out of habit, even though he knows Reddick lived alone. “Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department.”

There’s no answer, but he wasn’t expecting one. There’s no dog either. Just a sort of stale stillness to the house because nobody has been there in days, as though the air has settled like sediment in a wine bottle with nobody to walk through and shift the layers.

Stiles sighs. It’s not like Reddick is any great loss to the world—he’s got a rap sheet going back to his teenage years, with everything from car theft to selling drugs to arson—but Stiles feels sorry for the dog. It’s pretty obvious that Reddick was out in the Preserve walking it when he was attacked by the wolf and, going by the state of the dog’s lead, there’s a very good chance it didn’t fare any better than Reddick.

He finds a picture of it in the kitchen, stuck to the refrigerator, which makes it worse somehow. The dog might not have been living in luxury, but Reddick cared enough to take it out to the Preserve to exercise it, and to stick a photo of it on his fridge. And—Stiles winces at the smell when he opens the refrigerator, because things are just starting to turn—he cared enough to keep a bag of brisket bones on hand for it.

He closes the refrigerator and helps himself to the photograph. The dog is a big brown thing, with a massive boof head and a face made up entirely of wrinkles and drool. Stiles figures he’ll pass the photo on to Cassie, the admin assistant at the station who is in charge of running the Department’s social media accounts, and maybe she can put it on their Facebook page and ask people to keep an eye out for it.

Then he leaves the house, and heads home to his small apartment in Forest View Apartments. 

The name is a misnomer. Maybe back when the building was built in the 1970s there was an actual forest view, but all Stiles can see from his front window is a view of the parking lot, and, across from that, the back of a small strip mall. The strip mall has an incredible Thai takeout place though, so fuck trees, right?

Stiles gets Thai takeout for dinner, and settles in on his couch, determined not to move his ass from this spot until it’s time for bed.

An hour later he’s in sweatpants and jogging shoes—both of which he hasn’t worn since his time at the academy—and one of those flashlight-on-a-headband things that make him look like a cross between a coal miner and a total dick, and he’s trudging along one of the many paths in the preserve looking for a lost dog. Which probably makes him more of a dick than the headlamp, to be honest, because the chances of finding Reddick’s dog are slim to none. But Stiles doesn’t think he’d be able to sleep if he hadn’t at least tried.


	2. Chapter 2

“Five more minutes, Dad,” Stiles grumbles as his dad shakes him gently on the shoulder. It isn’t until he rolls over and tries to burrow under his pillow that he realises he isn’t, in fact, fifteen years old and going to be late for school. Instead, he blinks his eyes open wearily and discovers that he is twenty-seven years old, a detective, and has fallen asleep on his desk in his office in the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department.

And drooled on an arrest report.

Dad cocks an eyebrow and folds his arms over his chest. “Just how many times have you gone running around the Preserve at night this week, instead of getting a good night’s sleep like the responsible adult you’re still trying to convince me you are?”

There is a lot in that to unpack.

“Firstly, I _am_ a responsible adult,” Stiles says. “I pay my rent and everything. And look! They gave me a gun.”

Dad looks unimpressed. “How many times, Stiles?”

“Three times,” Stiles mutters.

“Let it go, kid,” Dad says. “The dog’s either run far, far away, or it’s dead. And you need your sleep. I don’t want you going out on calls when you’re not thinking straight.”

“Dad, I—”

“Detective Stilinski,” Dad says in his I-am-the-Sheriff voice, the one that brooks no argument. “Let it go.”

Stiles sighs, but he knows when he’s beaten. And Dad’s order comes with a side of guilty relief. This way, Stiles isn’t making the decision to give up—Dad is making it for him. And, as much as Stiles doesn’t want to admit it to himself, it’s the right decision. It just doesn’t feel good.

“Go and get a coffee, kiddo,” Dad says. He flicks a twenty dollar bill onto Stiles’s desk. “Get one for me while you’re at it.”

Stiles takes the twenty.

*****

Laura Hale makes the best coffee in Beacon Hills, though Stiles will admit the bar is low. The point is, Laura could hold her own in some hipster place like Portland, where her nearest competition isn’t Starbucks, whose mission statement seems to be about evolving coffee into something that doesn’t actually taste like coffee. Laura’s coffee tastes like coffee, and it’s glorious.

Stiles places his order at the counter, and moves to the side to wait for his order. He studies the display case of cakes and baked goods first, because even though he ate breakfast he could absolutely fit in a bear claw right now, and then his attention if drawn to a burst of laughter from out on the patio.

The patio is an open area filled with tables, and with a view of the street. Stiles, who usually grabs his coffee to go, has only been out there a few times, back when he and Danny were trying to do Sunday brunches a while back. It didn’t last, because they’re both in the sorts of jobs where they get emergency call outs that always come at the worst possible time. At least Danny gets to wear scrubs with puppies and kittens on them though—he’s a doctor in the pediatric ward at the hospital. Stiles has to wear a tie.

Stiles glares at the happy people enjoying their happy day, and is for a second he’s pleased to see he’s not the only one glaring. There’s a super hot older guy sitting out on the patio who is also giving them a death stare. Stiles feels a rush of solidarity followed by a rush of lust—the guy is hot, and Stiles has _eyes_ , okay?—and then his gaze falls to the dog sitting at the guy’s side, its big boof head resting on his knee as it gazes at him adoringly.

Side note: Stiles could do that.

Stiles swallows down that inappropriate thought, because it’s the dog. It’s the missing dog. It’s _Reddick’s_ dog.

He barrels out onto the patio.

“Where did you get that dog?”

The guy raises an eyebrow so judgemental and fixes Stiles with a look so withering that he can only be a Hale. “Excuse me?”

“Where did you get that dog?” Stiles demands. It’s definitely Reddick’s dog, except it’s wearing a sparkling pink diamante collar, and its toenails have been painted matching pink. Reddick is probably rolling in his grave right now, if there’s enough of him left to do it.

“That’s none of your business,” the man says, his bluer-than-blue eyes gleaming in his very attractive, very punchable face.

“Then you obviously don’t know who I am,” Stiles says, about to reach for his badge.

The man tilts his head. “I know who you are. You put Play-Doh down my niece’s underpants.”

The happy people at the next table fall suddenly silent.

“That was over twenty years ago,” Stiles tells them, feeling his face burning. “We were in _kindergarten_.” He tugs his badge out and flashes it. “Now, where did you get that dog?”

“The same cereal packet you got your badge, obviously, sweetheart,” the man says. He reaches for the wallet on the table, and opens it and extracts a business card. He passes it to Stiles. _Peter Hale, Attorney at Law_. “Now, unless I’m under arrest for the crime of, I don’t know, _having a dog_ , then I’m afraid our conversation is at an end.”

He rises from the table, forcing Stiles to take a step back.

“Come on, Petal,” he says, and the dog gazes at him adoringly.

Stiles watches them go, replaying their very brief interaction over and over in his head before Peter is even out of sight.

_Sweetheart? The_ fuck?

*****

“Looking for something, sweetheart?” Peter Hale asks on Thursday evening, leaning out his window.

“Nope,” says Stiles, trying to look casual at being caught halfway up the condo’s fire escape.

“Hmm,” Peter says. “I can’t see a warrant. I think it must have fallen down there into the gutter. Along with your dignity.”

He gives Stiles a shit-eating grin, and closes his window.

*****

Okay, Stiles muses on Friday morning, so clearly his undercover surveillance skills have gotten a little rusty. To be fair, there is no way Peter Hale should have heard him sneaking up that fire escape. Stiles was as silent as a cat, dammit. Also, he should probably stop doing things that could endanger his career just for the sake of a dog who is clearly perfectly okay. In fact, she’s more than okay—she’s being utterly spoiled, which is more than Reddick did for her.

So why the fucking secrecy? If Peter Hale just found the dog, why didn’t he tell Stiles that? It’s not like Reddick had any family for the dog to go to, and, honestly, after seeing how well Peter’s treating her, it’s not like Stiles would let that happen anyway. The guy is an asshole, but he’s an asshole who treats that big, ugly dog like a princess, and that’s exactly the sort of behaviour that Stiles can get behind.

He grabs a donut from the box in the bullpen, and goes to bitch to his dad. He leaves out the part about the fire escape though, because he’s not a total idiot.

“So you’re sure it’s the same dog?” Dad asks, a frown furrowing his brow.

“It’s the same dog.”

“And it’s fine?”

“Yeah.”

Dad gives him a look like he’s the crazy, unreasonable one in this situation, and not Peter Hale. “Then why are you still wasting time on this?”

“Because…” Because he’s fixated on Peter Hale being an asshole, and he wants to make him pay somehow? No, that won’t fly with Dad. “Because the leash was bitten through.” He gestures wildly, sending powdered sugar flying like snow. “What? A wolf got close enough to do that, but the dog got away somehow?”

“No, Stiles,” Dad says dryly. “Obviously it’s a massive cover up, and wild wolves are conspiring with Peter Hale so that he can steal a dog.”

“Sarcasm isn’t cute, Dad.”

“Wrong,” Dad says. “It’s adorable. Now get the hell out of my office so I can finish these pay returns.”

Stiles grumbles all the way back to the donuts.

Fine. He’ll let it go. It’s not as though he doesn’t have six hundred other things to be doing, so he sets about doing them with the sort of fixation a bloodhound would be proud of. Or some other creature that isn’t a dog, because Stiles is done thinking about dogs. Meanwhile, if Peter Hales gets so much as a parking ticket, Stiles will be all over his ass like…

Like an incredibly grateful and appreciative person, because that ass is fine?

No.

He needs to not think about Peter Hale and his stupid smug face and his unfairly glorious ass. That way madness lies.

Stiles spends the day working on a theft from the grocery store. It’s not usually something he’d be asked to investigate, but he’s pretty sure it’s part of a bigger operation. It’s the third time in a month the grocery store’s been hit this way: someone starts a disturbance to distract security, while someone else wheels out a whole damn cart filled to the brim. It’s hardly the Great Train Robbery, but given this is the third theft with a similar MO, if it’s an organised group behind it, they’re making bank.

He makes a couple of calls to neighboring jurisdictions to see if they’ve had anything that fits the same MO, and gets a few hits. He gets their files emailed to him and puts together an intelligence flier on the faces he gets from the CCTV.

It’s almost home time when a woman comes to the counter to report an assault, and Stiles listens in until it turns out her neighbor threw a bunch of leaves in her face, and lets Parrish deal with it.

It’s dark, and he’s just about to head out the door when dispatch takes the call: there’s been another animal attack in the Preserve. A guy ripped apart just like Reddick was.

Stiles grabs his jacket and remembers to change his shoes, and then he’s in his car racing for the scene.

*****

Cora Hale called it in, and she’s not happy about it. She shoulders her rifle and glares at Stiles as he walks up to her from the parking lot. Turns out he didn’t need to change his shoes, since this time the wolf has strolled straight into the middle of a campsite full of cabins, straight in through an open door, and ripped Bill Unger’s throat out as he was watching a DVD.

If Cora Hale doesn’t look happy at that turn of events, then neither do the other occupants of the holiday cabins; they look downright traumatized, huddled together on their little patios, watching avidly.

“Still going to tell me we don’t have a wolf problem?” Stiles asks as he climbs the creaking front steps and enters the cabin.

Cora huffs and says nothing.

Boyd is already on scene.

Stiles puts booties over his rubber boots before stepping inside.

It’s about as gruesome as he imagined it would be. It looks worse than Reddick, because it’s indoors, and under bright lights, which really shows up all the blood splatter. Unger—or what’s left of him—is sitting in an easy chair in front of the television. He’s not going to get his cleaning deposit back, that’s for sure.

“And that’s me done,” Stiles announces, and spins back toward the front door. “Boyd, keep the scene secure for Hailey, and call the coroner when she’s done.”

“Okay,” Boyd says.

Stiles heads for the door, his attention snagging on the back of the latch. There’s a dark smear on it that looks like it might be blood. Which is… weird. Super weird, actually.

“Boyd,” Stiles says, “make sure Hailey sees this.”

“Got it,” Boyd says.

“Oh, nice to know our tax dollars are being well spent,” Cora snarks at him when they’re on the front porch.

“Excuse you,” Stiles says. “Does this look like a crime to you? Can I arrest a wolf for breaking the law? If anyone’s being a waste of tax dollars here, it’s you. Aren’t you supposed to stop people getting eaten by wild animals?”

Cora rolls her eyes.

“Is this about the Play-Doh thing?” Stiles asks curiously. “Do you still seriously hate me for the Play-Doh thing, because that was over twenty years ago.”

“What?” Her brow crinkles. “I don’t hate you.”

“Of course you do,” Stiles says. “You look at me like you want to murder me.”

“I look at everyone like that,” she says, looking at him like she wants to murder him.

“Huh.” Stiles considers that for a moment. “I guess that’s actually true.” He stretches. “Okay, good talk, new BFF. See you around.”

“I’m not your BFF!” she calls after him, and he pretends not to hear her.

On his way back to the parking lot, Stiles stops to talk to the holidaymakers in the other cabins. One of them heard screaming just before dark, which was when the discovery was made, but not a single person saw a massive man-eating wolf wandering through the cabins. And there were plenty of people out and about, using the barbecues or the playground equipment.

That seems weird.

The place is full of small fat toddlers who can’t run fast, but the wolf went inside a cabin to kill a guy?

Everything about this is weird.

And then it suddenly gets a whole lot weirder when a woman in Cabin Three tells Stiles that no, she never saw a wolf—goodness, is it even safe here for families?—and the only other person she saw when she was unloading her groceries down in the parking lot was an attractive man walking a large, ugly dog with a sparkly pink collar.

What the _fuck_?


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles is halfway through taking Bill Unger’s condo apart on Saturday morning when he gets the call from Hailey. She cuts straight to the chase, which is what he likes most about her.

“So, the blood on the back of the door latch was Unger’s,” she says.

“Uh huh.” Stiles pulls out a desk drawer and sets in on the desk as he digs through the contents. It’s mostly USB cords and Allen keys.

“If your perp wasn’t a wolf,” Hailey continues, “I’d say they entered the cabin, locked the door, killed him, and then opened the door again on the way out.”

“Right,” Stiles says. “But it _is_ a wolf.”

“Right,” Hailey agrees.

“Which means…?”

“Which means I’m glad I’m not a detective,” Hailey says. “If you’re coming back to the station before lunch, can you pick me up a sub?”

She ends the call.

Stiles squints down at the drawer full of shit, not actually seeing any of it. At the back of his mind, crazy, wild theories are forming that will allow the pieces of this puzzle to fit together, but Stiles pushes them away again because he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his weekend, or the rest of his life, at Eichen House.

When he goes to put the drawer back in, it jams. Stiles shoves it harder, but that doesn’t seem to help. So he pulls it out again, and upends it. Shit scatters all over the desk, and Stiles sees the thick envelope taped to the bottom of the drawer. He unsticks it and opens it.

There must be at least a grand inside, in twenties and fifties. There’s also a phone number written on a scrap of paper.

Stiles isn’t sure how any of this fits in with Unger’s death, but it’s something, right?

It has to be something.

*****

The phone number is from a burner phone that goes to a message bank. A woman’s voice says to leave a message and that’s it.

Stiles does not leave a message.

He sits at his desk in the station, eating his sub, brushing shreds of lettuce off his keyboard, and comparing Unger’s criminal history to Reddick’s. They’re not listed as associates, but they have very similar histories and they’re both from Beacon Hills, so Stiles figures they ran in the same circles. Beacon Hills is a small enough town that it’d be impossible their paths didn’t cross at some point.

Oh, and there it is. They were both in prison in Solano a few years back at the same time.

Stiles still isn’t sure what it means, but he’s certain they have more tying them together than the freakish manner of their deaths.

He keeps coming back to the fact they both have previous for arson. It snags in his brain for some reason, and he finds himself clicking back through the station’s patrol logs—is it December he’s looking for, or was it before then? He finds it eventually in early January—an entry from Parrish about a call to a fire at the Hale house. There was no structural damage. The guys from the fire department suspected an accelerant had been used, but the Hales said it was an accident and didn’t want to make a complaint, so Parrish had just noted it on the log.

It’s another puzzle piece to add to the jumbled pile in the back of his head. He’s not sure how it fits yet, but he gets the feeling he needs it to put the big picture together.

He finishes his sub, and thinks about going home, but instead finds himself driving out to the Preserve. It’s a nice day. The sun is shining, the birds are twittering… and the trees are hiding at least one man-eating wolf, apparently. Stiles hopes the Hales sleep with their doors and windows deadbolted.

He hasn’t been past the Hale house in years—not since he was a kid trick or treating. Stiles didn’t really hang with the Hale kids at school. Laura and Derek were too old to be in his group of friends, most of the other kids were too young, and, yeah, he thought Cora wanted to murder him. But the house is as nice as he remembers: it’s a huge place, with two floors and an attic, a wraparound porch, those fancy pointy things on the roof that might be called gables but also might not be, and it’s set in an idyllic clearing in the Preserve. It’s the sort of place that would probably go for millions if the Hales ever sold, but why would they? It’s gorgeous. Meanwhile, the patch of damp on Stiles’s flaking bathroom ceiling looks like a dick when he squints just right, but hey, he’s not jealous of the Hales’ beautiful house or anything.

He crosses to the house, pausing for a moment on the couple of steps that lead up to the porch. There are yellow flowers in the flowerbed on the left side of the porch, but on the right side they’ve been flattened down into the dirt. And there’s a very large animal footprint in the soft soil beside them. Maybe a big dog, though it’d have to be even bigger than Petal, and maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, there’s only that single footprint, as though the animal leapt over the porch and landed with three feet in the grass and one in the flower bed.

Stiles snaps a picture of the print with his phone, feeling what’s now becoming a customary itch at the back of his skull.

He steps up onto the front porch, intending to ring the doorbell, but he’s distracted by a patch of wooden boards close to the door. They’ve recently been replaced by the look of things—the stain on them isn’t as worn and dark as along the rest of the porch—and Stiles remembers from Parrish’s log that the fire was on the porch. This must have been the seat of the fire.

The Hales had said it was an accident, so Stiles had assumed it was an electrical fault or something, but there are no outlets he can see along the outside wall, and nothing to indicate there’d be wiring under the porch anyway. Maybe someone was using power towels out here or something, or one of the littler Hales found a box of matches? Just another weird thing, he guesses.

He’s still squinting at the boards when a woman pulls the front door open.

“Who are you?” she asks. “And why are you glaring at my porch?”

She’s not a young woman, but she’s gorgeous. She’s got clever, sparkling eyes, and lines around them from laughing. Her dark hair has a little bit of gray threaded through it.

“Detective Stilinski,” he says, and holds out his hand.

She shakes it. “Talia Hale.”

“Don’t let him in, Tally!” someone yells from inside. “Not without a warrant!”

Stiles rolls his eyes. So does Talia.

A moment later, Peter Hale appears and leans in the doorjamb, as insouciant as a cat. “What an unadulterated pleasure,” he clearly lies. “Tired of stalking me at my condo, so you followed me to my sister’s house?” He grins at Talia. “I caught him on my fire escape acting like a little creeper. What kind of a pervert are you, Detective Stilinski?”

“Where’d you get the dog, Mr Hale?” Stiles asks.

“Hmmm.” He folds his arms over his chest. “How about I’ll answer your question if you answer mine?”

“Is that your question?”

“Is that _yours_?” Peter asks, arching a brow.

God. He just can’t win with this asshole, can he? Stiles is annoyed to discover he’s enjoying this little exchange more than he should be. He lifts his chin. “Where’d you get the dog, Mr Hale?”

Peter’s mouth quirks, because the man never met a smirk he could suppress, did he? “Me first, Detective. What kind of a pervert are you?”

Stiles smirks right back. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Peter’s eyes widen, and his smirk grows. “Oh, I _like_ you.”

“Where’d you get the dog, Mr Hale?”

“I found it in the Preserve,” Peter says. “On the Overlook Trail, when I was jogging.”

“And you couldn’t have told me that the first time I asked you?”

“Oh, but Stiles,” Peter says, “this way is so much more _fun_.”

And then he strolls inside again, leaving both Stiles and Talia staring after him.

It’s not until he’s halfway back to town that Stiles wonders when Peter learned his first name.

*****

Stiles is back at work on Sunday. He likes working on the weekends. It gives him a chance to catch up on his paperwork, because usually the mornings are quiet, and he’s not distracted by the station being full of admin staff. Stiles is a Chatty Cathy, alright, and it’d be just plain rude not to ask Martha the filing clerk how those apple-cheeked grandkids of hers are doing, and that’s never a short conversation. Luckily she keeps him supplied in baked goods while she fills him in, which honestly is about eighty percent of the reason he’s interested. But Sunday means no Martha, and barely anyone else as well—the deputies pop in and out throughout their shifts, but mostly spend their hours on patrol—so it’s quiet.

He works through a few court briefs he needs to have finished by Monday, and then, almost on a whim, digs out the cell phone number he found with the money under Unger’s desk drawer, and dials it on his office phone, with the caller ID disabled. He expects it to go to the message bank again, and almost falls off his chair when someone answers.

“Hello?” It sounds like the same woman from the message.

“Hi,” Stiles says. “I got this number from Bill Unger.”

It’s not a lie, exactly.

The woman is silent for a long while. And then she says, “Who is this?”

“A friend of Bill’s,” Stiles says, and okay, yeah, that’s a total lie. “He told me you could hook me up.”

“Hook you up with what?” the woman asks, the suspicion evident in her tone.

“I need some cash,” Stiles says, dodging the question entirely, because fuck if he knows what Unger was doing for this woman. “He said you might have something for me.”

“Yeah.” The woman’s voice is flat. “I’m not outsourcing anymore.”

And she ends the call.

Stiles guesses he can chalk that up to a dead end.

*****

Stiles runs into Peter Hale on Monday, at the courthouse. Stiles is there to give evidence against a guy for drug possession, and Peter Hale is there to smirk at him from the defense counsel’s table.

Of course he is.

How has Stiles been a detective in Beacon Hills for the last eight months and never run across Peter Hale before, and now suddenly he’s everywhere? Like the weird mould growing on the walls in Stiles’s place. Side note: he should really look for a better place. But the point is, suddenly Peter is everywhere. He’s in the courtroom, grinning when he gets half the evidence thrown out on a technicality, and again outside in the corridor as he gives Stiles a smarmy little wave.

Stiles stops in his tracks, turns on his heel, and closes the distance between them. “You know that evidence was good!”

“Then next time your department should use a lab that hasn’t been recently at the center of a scandal,” Peter says. His bluer-than-blue eyes shine. “Maybe you’ll get lucky next time, and get a lab tech who isn’t taking bribes.”

“Which had nothing to do with this case,” Stiles says through gritted teeth.

“Prove it,” Peter says with a lazy smile.

Stiles rolls his eyes, because Peter is right, but Stiles would rather die than admit it. “Why haven’t I seen you in court before?”

Peter blinks at the sudden change of subject. “Because I only moved back to Beacon Hills a month ago?”

“In January,” Stiles says. Right about the time the Hales’ porch was damaged. He’s not sure if that’s significant, or totally irrelevant. He files it away, just in case. “Did you ever represent Bill Unger or Clay Reddick?”

“No,” Peter says.

Stiles doesn’t think he’s lying, but he’s not dumb enough to think he couldn’t be.

“So,” Peter says with a charming smile, “care to grab lunch with me, detective?”

And Stiles has no idea how to respond to that, so he’s super, super glad that his cell phone rings. It’s a private number. He answers it. “Detective Stilinski.”

“Detective,” a woman says, her voice like a sultry purr. A chill runs down his spine, because it’s _her_. It’s the woman from the message bank. And there is no fucking way she should have his cell phone number. He called her on his office phone, with the number hidden. “Well, well, isn’t that interesting?”

“Since you know my name, how about you give me yours?” he asks.

Peter is watching him very closely, his upper lip curled up. It doesn’t look like a smirk this time. It looks like a snarl.

The woman laughs. “Oh, I don’t think so, Detective. And, a word to the wise, if there’s a brain in that pretty little head of yours, you’ll stop digging.”

Stiles has been threatened a thousand times and in a thousand increasingly creative ways. He’s not impressed with vague bullshit. “And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t,” the woman says, “you won’t like how this ends for you.”

She ends the call.

“Stiles?” Peter asks in a low voice.

“The thing I love most about this job is all the lovely people I get to meet,” Stiles says with a grin. “But raincheck on that lunch. Possibly for a few days, and possibly forever—I haven’t decided yet.”

Because Peter Hale might be hot, but he’s also sketchy as fuck.

“Were you just threatened?” Peter asks him, tilting his head.

“I gotta go, counsellor,” Stiles says, ignoring the question as he heads for the courthouse exit and the bright, sunlit day outside. “I’ve got some digging to do!”

He can feel Peter’s gaze on him all the way out onto the street.


	4. Chapter 4

A week later, and it’s possible that Stiles has turned into a paranoid, gibbering mess. Unless he just imagined heading to work at ass o’clock in the morning, trudging through his apartment block’s parking lot, and thinking that he saw, in the brief flash of lights when he unlocked his car, a massive wolf watching him from the back of the strip mall.

He dives into his car and pulls the door shut.

By the time he starts the engine and turns the lights on, of course there’s nothing there. There was probably nothing there this whole time.

“Have you been sleeping, kid?” Dad asks him with a critical stare when he stumbled through the back door of the station holding a takeout coffee as big as his head.

“I am rip-roaring and ready to go,” Stiles says, which he’s pretty sure they both know doesn’t answer the question.

“I’m on night shift and I look better than you do,” Dad points out.

“I.” Stiles blinks. “That’s harsh, Dad. Really harsh. My face is genetically half your fault, after all.”

“You know that’s not what I mean!” Dad calls after him as he scurries toward his desk. “Stiles! You know that’s not what I meant!”

Stiles grins.

Okay, yeah, so he hasn’t been sleeping, and he is tired, and the bags under his eyes have bags. And it’s not because the woman threatened him—it’s because she threatened him and probably thinks she got to him, because he hasn’t been able to dig up a damn thing on all this fuckery at all. And it offends his black, vindictive heart that she might think her threat actually worked. Stiles’s main ambition in life now is to annoy the everlasting fuck out of this anonymous woman, and be the irritating thorn in her side—except he has no idea who the hell she even is. It’s hard to make someone’s life hell if you don’t know who they are.

He works for a few hours at the station, and then decides that he’ll go and check Reddick’s house again. He was looking for a dog the first time, not a conspiracy. Or a whatever-the-fuck this is.

He grabs the keys from evidence, and drives over there.

And finds…

Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

That’s not the way the story is supposed to go. Stiles has watched a lot of movies, alright? He’s meant to get a breakthrough in the case at this point. Maybe he should go and yell at Dad about the fat cats at City Hall and how he’s going to follow this all the way to the top, until Dad takes his gun and his badge and _then_ he’ll get his breakthrough.

Like, he’s not retiring next week, so he should be safe, right?

He heads back to the station, tired and annoyed.

He knows when he’s beaten.

Well, in theory he knows, but in practice this is going to eat at him for _ages_.

*****

Another few days pass and Stiles has almost stopped seeing imaginary wolves lurking in the darkness out of the corner of his eyes. Almost. But he’s put the Reddick and Unger cases behind him, and he is definitely not taking note of when Peter Hale is most likely to be at Laura’s coffee shop so that he can run into him and flirt-snark for a while. Definitely not.

On the plus side, he’s finally got a lead on the grocery thieves, and their whole operation will be coming to an ignominious end as soon as Stiles gets his warrant for the ringleader’s house.

So things are kind of getting back to normal.

Stiles gets the call from David Reddick on Wednesday evening, just as he’s about to leave the station.

“Detective Stilinski?” the man asks. He sounds older. “I’m David Reddick. I’m Clay Reddick’s uncle. Listen, I just got a package from him delivered here—he must’ve posted it before he died, but you know what the mail’s like these days. And it’s a hell of a thing, but it’s full of cash and one of those stick-thingies you plug into a computer. Well, I didn’t know what to do with it, and my wife said I should call you. Do you think it’s something you want to take a look at?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “Very much so.”

David Reddick lives locally. He gives Stiles the address, and Stiles heads over there. Whatever Clay Reddick was messed up in, Stiles hopes the USB drive will shed some light on it.

David Reddick is obviously doing better than his nephew was. He lives in the new subdivision on the northern side of town. It’s so new that there are only three houses in the street, and a whole bunch of driveways that lead to nothing yet. There are a whole bunch of signs with smiling families that tell Stiles if he only had an obscene amount of money, he could be home right now in Beacon Meadows.

Stiles pulls up at the house. Of the three houses in the street, this is the only one with lights on, so the others mustn’t have sold yet. He knocks on the front door, and an older man opens it. He’s gray-haired, sharp-eyed, and has a handshake of iron.

“Detective Stilinski? David Reddick. Come on through.” He leads his way through to the back of the house. It’s empty. “Sorry, we’ve only just moved in, and we’re still in the process of unpacking.”

“Sure,” Stiles says, a prickle of unease tingling up his spine because—

“Hi,” says a woman way too young to be David Reddick’s wife. She’s blond and hot, and looks way too pleased to see Stiles. “It’s nice to meet you, Detective.”

—Because there are no boxes either. No boxes, no TV, and Stiles has heard this woman’s voice before. She’s the woman from the phone call, which means he’s just walked right into a trap.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Don’t even think about it,” the old guy says, levelling a firearm in Stiles’s face before Stiles can reach for his. “Hands up.”

Stiles obeys, and the woman slinks forward and helps herself to his service Glock.

Well, he’s well and truly fucked now, isn’t he?

*****

“Nice murder basement,” Stiles says when they march him down the stairs.

There’s a shitload of plastic on the floor, which doesn’t give Stiles a warm and fuzzy feeling at all.

“Thanks,” the woman says brightly. “We fixed it up just for you.”

“Kate,” the old man growls. “Just get on with it.”

“Dads, am I right?” she asks Stiles with a wink. “You work with yours too, right?”

“Right.” Stiles wonders if he should be panicking more right now, or bargaining, or something, but for the first time in his life he’s completely out of ideas. “So, since you’re going to kill me anyway, wanna tell me what this is all about?”

Kate shrugs. “Sorry, cutie-pie, but we don’t really have time for the whole monologue thing.”

“Oh, come on,” Stiles says, “because I have some crazy theories, and I’d kind of like some feedback.”

Kate snorts, and raises his Glock. She presses the barrel against his forehead. “Too bad.”

“Oh,” says Stiles, and squeezes his eyes shut. And maybe it’s the shock, or the rush of adrenaline that comes from facing his imminent death, but something sparks inside the back of his skull, and rattles all those puzzle pieces together, and Stiles catches a tantalising glimpse of the only thing that makes any sense at all. “Werewolves, right?”

She doesn’t answer.

He didn’t really expect her to. 

He flinches when he hears the bang.

And that should be the last thing he hears, except suddenly the basement is filled with screams, growls, and the oddly Velcro-like sound of tearing flesh.

*****

“So here’s the thing,” Stiles says to the very naked and very bloody Peter Hale as they both stare at the gruesome remains of Kate and her father on the basement floor, “this is going to be very difficult to pin on a wolf. Which is ironic, because you are, in fact, a wolf.”

He ponders that for a moment, because those words really should sound more ludicrous than they do. But what’s ludicrous even mean in a world where Stiles just saw a massive man-eating wolf transform into a very naked Peter Hale?

Peter cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t be so defeatist, sweetheart. You’re way too clever for that.”

“Were you stalking me because this woman threatened me?” Stiles asks.

“Yes.” Peter doesn’t look even a little bit apologetic. Which is fair, because if he hadn’t been stalking Stiles, Stiles would be dead right now. “That’s Kate Argent, by the way. And Gerard, her father.”

Stiles nudges a body part with the toe of his shoe. “And they wanted to kill me, why exactly?”

“They wanted to kill me,” Peter said, “and my family. You just got in the way of our little back and forth when you started looking too closely at Reddick, then Unger.”

“Your little back and forth,” Stiles says, his eyes narrowing. “This has something to do with your porch, right? Because Reddick and Unger both had previous for arson, and that’s when you came back to town.” Another piece falls into place. “Kate paid them to kill your family.”

“Yes,” Peter says, stretching. And really, okay, yeah, that’s too much penis for Stiles to be looking at while he’s trying to think. Peter smirks proudly, and why wouldn’t he? It’s, ah, impressive. “So I killed Reddick and Unger in retaliation. You weren’t supposed to notice anything, by the way.”

“Peter, you stole his dog!”

“I rescued her!” Peter exclaims. “Did you see the conditions he was keeping my poor princess in?”

“I don’t know why you didn’t just leave her there after you ripped his throat out!” 

Peter gasps. “I’m not a monster!”

“Fine,” Stiles says. “But it’s still murder!”

“It was self defense.”

“Self defense isn’t retrospective, counsellor.”

“I’d argue in court,” Peter says smugly, “except why would I ever end up in court? All the evidence here points to a wild animal attack.”

“You just admitted it!”

“Oh, good luck putting that in a report,” Peter says, and rolls his eyes.

He has a point.

“Fuck my life,” Stiles says, and stares down at the carnage again. Then he takes a peek at Peter’s junk when he’s sure Peter won’t catch him doing it.

Peter does. His smirk grows. So does something else.

“Ask me on a date again,” Stiles says.

“Stiles, would you like to come on a date with me?” Peter asks.

“Yes,” Stiles says, finally lifting his gaze from Peter’s junk. “That would be very nice, thank you.”

*****

Stiles stays up late, expecting to get the call any minute now. How long will it take for someone to discover the bodies in the basement of the house anyway? He and Peter left the doors open. Someone’s gotta check it out, right? An expensive development like that should have security patrols when it’s under construction.

The call doesn’t come.

Instead, Dad knocks on his door at six in the morning, loaded up with coffee and bagels.

“Dressed for work?” Dad asks. “I thought you were on a day off today.”

“Um,” says Stiles. “Oooh, is that breakfast?”

Dad rolls his eyes. “Expecting a callout, were you?”

“No,” Stiles lies. “Why would I be expecting a callout. I certainly haven’t developed any psychic powers. Why would you assume I have? That’s ridiculous. I resent the implications. Maybe _you’re_ the one expecting a callout!”

“You’re rambling,” Dad says, and shoves a coffee at him. Then he exhales slowly as he looks around Stiles’s kitchen, and the puce-coloured linoleum. “I always forget what a dump this place is.”

“It has character.”

“It has the character of a meth addict, kiddo,” Dad says. “Anyway, you’re expecting a callout to Beacon Meadows, am I right?”

Stiles freezes.

“Their security is shit,” Dad says. He checks his watch. “I bet it’ll be at least another hour before they find the bodies.”

“The bodies?” Stiles asks cautiously.

“Son, I’m the Sheriff of Beacon Hills,” Dad says. “Do you think I haven’t figured out this werewolf bullshit yet? Seriously?” He shrugs. “Also, Talia called me last night and filled me in.”

“Talia?”

“Talia Hale,” Dad says, “the pack alpha.”

“The what now?” Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose “Wait, you _knew_ about all this? This whole time?”

“Of course,” Dad says. “Why the hell else do you think I told you to let it go?”

“You could have been a little more explicit!”

John snorts. “What? And warned you off? How well did that work out for Kate Argent?”

Stiles blinks. “Okay, you have a point, but—but—”

“Eat your bagel, kid,” Dad says. “You’ve got a long day coming up.”

“While I investigate two more deaths-by-wolf that I’m not actually allowed to solve?” Stiles asks sourly.

Dad slaps him on the back. “Welcome to the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department, kiddo. Did you know Parrish is a hell hound?”

Stiles drops his coffee on the floor, and it splatters all over his shoes. “A fucking _what_?”

And to think he’d thought coming home to Beacon Hills would be boring.

“Oh,” Dad says, “and Talia says if you want to know anything about werewolf mating rituals, she’s happy to talk you through it.”

*****

Stiles refuses to talk to Talia Hale about werewolf mating rituals. As long as they include Friday night takeout and Netflix followed by a marathon sex session, followed by Saturday breakfast in bed and then walking Petal in the park, he couldn’t give a fuck about the rest of the bells and whistles.

Frankly, Stiles is less excited by attending his first full moon run than he is about the fact that he’s finally moving out of his shitty apartment into Peter’s condo. He has a hot lawyer boyfriend with a dog. He’s fucking winning at life.

“Now, Stiles,” Talia tells him one night at pack dinner night. That’s a thing he has to go to now, apparently, and he’s lost count of how many Sunday nights it’s been now. Over a year’s worth, and who would have seen that coming? “There are important traditions that—”

“Oooh, Peter, look!” Stiles says, pointing to the picture on Instagram of a dog wearing a pink tutu. “Petal can be our ring-bearer, right?”

“Stiles, there are—”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Peter says with a grin. “Won’t she look _adorable_?”

Talia gives up.

And Peter’s right: Petal does look fucking adorable.


End file.
